


Cracks in the Shield

by plotweaver



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mostly hurt, Shy Bilbo, Winter Soldier AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 08:25:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6947563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plotweaver/pseuds/plotweaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Longing. Gilded. Hundred. Green. Forge. Thirteen. Docile. Hill. Mountain. One."</p>
<p>The words were the same. Spoken to him at the beginning of each awakening, as they had been since before he could remember. But this time, the voice that spoke them was different. The voice that spoke the words now was shaking, timid.</p>
<p>----------------------------------</p>
<p>Here's that WinterSoldier!Thorin AU that nobody asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cracks in the Shield

**Author's Note:**

> So, basically this is the MCU 'verse, but Thorin is the Winter Soldier. Language, sexual references, and violence are below, so keep that in mind. Enjoy!

“Longing. Gilded. Hundred. Green. Forge. Thirteen. Docile. Hill. Mountain. One.”

The words were the same. Spoken to him at the beginning of each awakening, as they had been since before he could remember.

But this time, the voice that spoke them was different. Different handlers had woken him up before, but each had spoken the words in a clipped, commanding tone. The voice that spoke the words now was shaking, timid.

He opened his eyes and straightened from where he was sitting in the chair. The dark, cement room he was in was not familiar to him, but he had grown used to waking up in different facilities, shipped off to wherever he was needed.

Before him was a small man with golden hair. Directly behind that man stood five other men, one of which was holding a gun to the golden-haired man’s head. There was no doubt as to who said the words: the golden-haired man held the battered book in his unsteady hands. The book. The book that held the words, the missions, everything. Why did this man, who appeared to have no power at all, who flinched when the barrel of the gun nudged his head, hold the most powerful object in the room?

“ _Thanu men?_ ” the golden-haired man asked.

As strange as this awakening was, he answered as he should. The words were not to be ignored. 

“ _Mafrad_ ,” he answered. Ready.

The golden-haired man seemed to forget those behind him. He took a quick step forward, eyes searching. He did not wear tactical uniforms like the others. Instead, he had on a sweater vest, a well-laundered shirt, and decent trousers. 

“You are the one they call ‘Oakenshield’, yes?”

“Yes.” 

“Why?”

Oakenshield’s eyes warily scanned the room. The one man still aimed a gun at the golden-haired man’s head, but his stance had loosened. He would be easy to disarm. He counted fourteen more firearms divided and concealed among the remaining four men, but they remained holstered. Very unusual. After every awakening, he usually had two guards ready to take him down in case any cryo-madness remained. 

Stranger still was the golden-haired man’s question. He held the book. Whoever held the book always knew exactly what they wanted with Oakenshield. They never bothered to ask who he was. He cocked his head to the side, contemplating the man before him.

“Why do they call you Oakenshield?” the golden-haired man repeated. 

He found that he inexplicably did not want to deny this man anything. Even the answer to the most simplest of questions.

He held up his arm. It was a metal alloy, smooth plates curving against each other to form a lethal weapon more so than a replacement for a missing limb. But it was not always a thing of deadly beauty.

“Mission Alpha Four-Nine-Four,” he recited. “Termination of Codename Azog. Mission partial success. Azog was defeated after he removed this unit’s right arm. Prosthetics of wood were used before this model was completed.”

It was instinct to use his fortified arm as a shield in a firefight. He briefly wondered if he had used his arm in such a manner when it was wooden. That wasn't something they let him remember, the people who put him in the chair. The same people who put him asleep and awoke him only when needed. The people who chose which mission stats were to be etched on to his brain forever and which were wiped clean.

He shook his head minutely. Insubordination was not tolerated. Insubordination was met with another round in the chair.

The golden-haired man took another tentative step forward.

“My name is Bilbo,” he said. The man with the gun behind him grunted and reaffirmed his aim at the back of Bilbo’s head. Bilbo cringed before continuing, “You are an agent of SMAUG now. You will be expected to comply.”

“ _Mafrad_ ,” Oakenshield repeated.

“Yes, of course,” Bilbo said. He wordlessly gaped around at the men behind him, as if searching for help. The men remained silent.

“I am to be your handler,” Bilbo said after a few more moments of floundering. “Your files indicate that you may react well to a constant presence, rather than the ever-changing commanders you have been used to.”

Oakenshield dipped his head. Bilbo held the book. Bilbo knew the words. Bilbo owned him now.

-

The missions continued, with little disturbance to the usual routine. He was woken with the words, briefed on the mission, then sent out into the field. It did not matter much which country or agency claimed him. He was a weapon. He could be used by anyone who knew how to pull the trigger. 

What mattered was that he grew eager to hear the words. 

Longing. Gilded. Hundred. Green. Forge. Thirteen. Docile. Hill. Mountain. One.

It was always Bilbo’s voice. Always that soft caress of syllables that pulled him out of the agony of the chair. Bilbo’s hazel eyes were always the first thing he saw, an anchor as he pulled himself upright to hear the particulars of whatever mission they needed him for. 

Bilbo always seemed agitated whenever he woke up. Oakenshield kept his arm close to his side or hidden behind his back during these moments, knowing that it intimidated people. It had made his past commanders anxious. He also kept his head slightly bowed in submission as Bilbo rattled off mission particulars. He waited for Bilbo to finish, for the irritableness to melt away, before standing. Bilbo would hand him his gear then, one piece at a time. Shirt, vest, holsters, knives, grenades, guns, gloves. They never touched. Oakenshield made sure to grab the opposite end of whatever Bilbo handed him. Every motion he made was tentative and calculated, so as not to scare off his new handler.

Because for the first time that he could remember, Oakenshield wanted something. He wanted to keep that soft voice close. He wanted that gentleness in his life, however little of a life it was. Bilbo’s reluctance to discuss missions intrigued him. Bilbo almost seemed disgusted by the violence, and that did something awful to Oakenshield’s chest. It twisted his insides to hear the discomfort in Bilbo’s voice, but still he listened and still he followed orders, because it kept the routine. It ensured Bilbo would be there to wake him up again for another.

He began to see every hostile in the field as simply another obstacle in his way back to Bilbo. If he assassinated this man, if he took that contraband, they would let him see Bilbo again. They would let Bilbo be with him as he went back to sleep.

\--

“Longing. Gilded. Hundred. Green. Forge. Thirteen. Docile. Hill. Mountain. One.”

The voice was right but the tone was wrong. Bilbo’s voice cracked over the syllables. Oakenshield bolted upright, eyes frantically seeking his handler. Bilbo stood in the same spot he always did, but his head was bowed. Oakenshield couldn’t see his eyes. The metal arm whirred as the fingers tensed. 

“ _Mafrad_ ,” Oakenshield said, as gently as he could manage. Bilbo lifted his chin slowly to look Oakenshield in the eye.

Oakenshield leapt out of the chair and was at Bilbo’s side in a second. His hands itched to brush themselves over the dark purple blossoming under Bilbo’s eye. His arms remained at his sides, though. Touching Bilbo wasn’t something that he allowed himself to do. He couldn’t bear it if he broke Bilbo, and that was what he was made to do: break things, hurt people. 

But somebody else hurting Bilbo? It was sickening and unacceptable. 

He did not hear himself growling until Bilbo put a hand on his chest. 

“It’s okay,” Bilbo said. He let out a shaky laugh that bordered on hysteria. “I may have protested a bit too hard against this mission. Said it was too dangerous a bit too many times before they _reassured_ me that nothing could go wrong.” Bilbo laugh broke on “reassured.” 

Oakenshield did not move. The light hand on his chest burned a brand onto his skin. Bilbo did not move it, and Oakenshield could not bring himself to turn away. Oakenshield opened his mouth to speak - he never said anything other than short words of assent at Bilbo’s relaying of orders and he did not know what he meant to say now - but a man burst in waving a rifle in Bilbo’s direction.

“Get on with it, you fuckin’ sap! We ain’t paying you to feel him up. Give him orders and send him out.”

Oakenshield moved to put himself between Bilbo and this man, but Bilbo shot forward across the room, eyes blazing. His hand was gone from his chest, and Oakenshield felt a lot colder for it.

“I’ve just woken him up. Do you have any clue as to how stressful that is on the human body?” Bilbo said.

“Fucker ain’t human,” the man said. “Look at him. He’s a fucking machine. Is that why you like him? Like to get freaky with robots, Baggins?”

Bilbo’s ears turning red and shoulders slumping were enough to get Oakenshield to move, but, in the middle of his second stride, the man reached out and cupped Bilbo’s face before giving it a light slap. An incredible rage roared through him and, less than a second later, he had the man pinned to the floor.

His right hand circled the man’s throat. Hard enough to hold him down, but not tight enough to knock him out. Oakenshield wanted him conscious. His metal hand pinned both of the man’s hands to the floor, above his head. Starting with the hand that touched Bilbo, he began smashing the fingers, one by one. 

His soldier’s mind told him that there were other men rushing into the room, yelling and aiming their weapons at him. He did not see any reason to stop.

Then a small yelp and a sharp intake of breath sounded from behind him. 

Oakenshield’s head snapped up. He looked back to see one of the men with his arms around Bilbo, a knife to his throat. 

“That’s right,” the man with the knife said. “You wanna beat him to a pulp? Go right ahead. I’ll just take it out of your sweetie’s pretty neck.” 

Oakenshield flexed his fingers, making a show of taking them off of the man underneath him.

“Interesting,” a deep voice from some other corner of the room said. Oakenshield didn’t search for the source. His eyes remained on Bilbo. He had been in this situation many times: a hostile somehow finding their hands on his payload. But this time he could not retain his assasin’s composure. His hands shook and his feet felt heavy as he stood.

“Very interesting,” the deep voice said. A man with white hair and dark eyebrows stepped into his line of sight. He rumbled in protest, shifting his weight until he could see Bilbo again. “It appears the Shield does have cracks after all.” 

The white-haired man glanced between Oakenshield and Bilbo before motioning with his hands carelessly.

“Put him on his knees.”

The man holding Bilbo kicked out, and Bilbo sank to his knees with a cry of pain.

Before Oakenshield could take a step forward, the white-haired man was in front of him.

“Oh, not to worry, dear soldier. Not to worry. We will see that no harm comes to him. _If_ ,” the man tilted his head, “you perform this mission to our expectations.”

Oakenshield finally tore his eyes from Bilbo. The white-haired man’s bushy eyebrows were raised, as if he were offering him the deal of a lifetime. 

“You see, I have always been of the philosophy that a carrot is much stronger than a stick. Incentive over punishment, yes?” The man nodded, agreeing with himself. “We now have a carrot for you, soldier. The Mighty Shield need not face the terrible pain of the chair. No, especially not when we have successive missions for which we need you.”

Oakenshield’s metal arm whirred, the equivalent to his muscles tensing. _Never again go to the chair?_

The white-haired man smiled. “We now have something we can give you! Something you can have for yourself. You succeed in these missions we give you, and you get him.” He pointed to Bilbo. “No one here will touch him ever again. He’ll be yours to do whatever you like with him. We’ll give you food to feed him. A bath to wash him. A bed to fuck him in, if that’s what you will.”

Bilbo looked up. Bright blue eyes met hazel. Oakenshield tried desperately to not see the dark purple around Bilbo's eye. _Never hurt him_ , Oakenshield thought, the expression on Bilbo’s face making him feel sick. _Never touch him. But to keep him safe? To keep him away from these men?_

“But if you refuse, if either of you becomes mutinous, you both will go to the chair. I’ll make you watch him suffer, Shield, before putting you in the chair myself.”

Oakenshield clenched his teeth. _Never_ , he swore to himself. _Never will Bilbo know the agony of the chair._

Bilbo held his gaze. His breathing was fast, but he did not appear scared. His cheeks were flushed and his brow furrowed in a furious expression. Oakenshield itched to go to him, to speak soft words. He wanted to make promises, to assure Bilbo that he had no need to be angry, because he would not be touched, would only be cared for after this moment. 

“Well, soldier? _Thanu men?_ ”

The words would come later. After the killing. After the mission. Bilbo would be given everything, and Oakenshield would be content with having been the one who provided it.

“ _Mafrad_ ,” Oakenshield said. _Ready._

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask me what SMAUG stands for, because I have no freaking clue.
> 
> Please let me know if you liked this! It's been bouncing in my head for awhile, and it finally demanded to be written. I might write something from Bilbo's POV next.
> 
> Obligatory khuzdul translations below:
> 
> Mafrad - Ready  
> Thanu men - My king


End file.
